Man accidentally runs over girlfriend with big rig in Cottonwood

A 50-year-old Yuba City woman was taken to the hospital after her 56-year-old boyfriend accidentally ran over her in a big rig Sunday afternoon on Parkway Drive in Cottonwood.

Deronda Gail Harris was taken by ambulance to Mercy Medical Center in Redding for major non-life threatening injuries, according to a California Highway Patrol release.

Harris and her boyfriend, Gregory Dwayne Gross of Yuba City, had been traveling on Parkway Drive, north of Fourth Street, when Gross pulled his big rig over along the east curb, facing north, next to the Cottonwood Chevron Station.

Gross told CHP officers he had helped Harris out of the semi and, assuming she was walking into the Chevron to use the restroom, went a short distance before making a U-turn.

As he turned the vehicle around, Gross found Harris, who appeared to have been run over by the right side tires of the tractor and trailer of the semi, badly injured on the roadside, the CHP release said.

Harris appeared to have been behind the tractor?s sleeper berth and in front of the rear axles on the right side of the trailer when she was hit, the release said.

The Cottonwood Fire Department responded and assisted CHP in the incident. Drugs and alcohol were not a factor in the incident and no one was cited or arrested.